Reblogged from Creativity & Innovation: I’ve just spent two stimulating days with a small group of architects, university professors, and creativity researchers, at a beautiful old lakeside estate called Marigold Lodge, in Western Michigan. Our goal: To collect everything we know about how to design spaces that maximize learning and foster creativity. With funding from the Sloan […]
Designing Spaces for Creativity
by Cameron D. Norman • October 21st, 2012
Designing a Social Innovation Wonderwall
by Cameron D. Norman • July 22nd, 2012
Paying attention to the social, technological, economic and environmental stresses and challenges we face isn’t always conducive to positive thinking and sometimes its useful to look at where problems are being addressed rather than created. Where to go for such inspiration is question is where this post begins. And all the roads that lead you […]
Empathy: The Ultimate Design + Systems Challenge
by Cameron D. Norman • July 1st, 2012
Empathy is a central feature of good human-centred design, yet is often practiced narrowly. Visualization with systems thinking and mindfulness are three additional features that can transform empathy from a simple tool to a vehicle for transformation by connecting us less to absolute problems and more to relative ones. In today’s Globe and Mail newspaper […]
Do Relationships Scale?
by Cameron D. Norman • October 31st, 2011
Meaning is something that requires attention to create and use and the more variables competing for attention in your life, the less meaningful things might be. If this is the case, can we design programs and initiatives that scale up from small to big? Or do we need to reframe the way we see scaling to something akin to a network, whereby there are a lot of small nodes connected together? Networking nodes seems to be a way to go big and go small.
If so, what does this mean for designing systems that scale? 
The Shadow of Design and Creative Work
by Cameron D. Norman • October 22nd, 2011
Designers seek to put their best forward in their creations, but sometimes it is the dark rather than the light that provides an impetus for good design. Carl Jung’s look into our darker nature might provide a means of understanding the lighter side of what we produce. My work and related inquiry into design has […]
Design and the Designer
by Cameron D. Norman • October 13th, 2011
This week professional designers from the United States and beyond descend on Phoenix to attend the AIGA Pivot conference. While much will be discussed about the art, science and craft of design, an equally important focus (and one that may not be as visible) is that of the designers themselves and the role they play […]
The Science of Design Thinking
by Cameron D. Norman • August 27th, 2011
Andrea Yip, a designer and health promoter, provides a bridge between the worlds of science, with its emphasis on evidence and strict adherence to protocols, and design, with its flexible, rapidly evolving, yet often non-specific methods. Indeed, Andrea’s blog showcases many examples of how design and fields like health promotion fit together and differ. It is time for both designers and scientists to listen more intently to this conversation.
By using methods, theories, analogies and conceptual models that extend our thinking beyond the realm of conventional design and science, we offer opportunities to make things, better — and in doing so shape our world for the greatest benefit for us all.
Extra-Sensory Knowledge Translation and Design
by Cameron D. Norman • August 18th, 2011
What if we could cultivate the means to be intimate with these methods in the service of better design and communication? What kind of design would that look like? Could we engage a much broader range of people into the discussion? Right now, we privilege those who can write and speak well, those who are forward (i.e., extroverted) and verbal, at the expense of those who might have as much to offer, but for whom writing, reading or oral communication might not be their strongest method of communication, yet that is all they are given. 
The Art of Complexity and Public Health
by Cameron D. Norman • August 14th, 2011
In public health we use focus groups — which were initially designed to focus a research question, not serve as a means of research unto itself — to generalize from a group-think scenario to an entire community and then claim that we know them. Really? Is this beholding? Is this the kind of contemplative inquiry that makes sense for public health. Could we learn more from artists? Our methods certainly could (see art of public health), but perhaps the way of the artist is also something we could learn more from
Visualizing Evaluation and Feedback
by Cameron D. Norman • August 3rd, 2011
Evaluation relies heavily on feedback and data; providing more visual ways of sharing this data might provide better options for explaining complex phenomena. 
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